Behind the Scenes

Working Behind the Scenes

Good evening! I thought that today I would be able to finish our theme of being able to maintain your faith through it all.  That will not happen. However, we will keep working on it to finish it. Before I give you two of the many times that the Lord worked behind the scenes for me, I wanted to talk about Joshua and Jericho for a moment.

I will give you the short version here. You can go to Joshua chapter 6 and read the entire story of the collapse of the wall. The children of Israel had to conquer the City of Jericho so that they could occupy the land that had been promised through Abraham about 500 years earlier.

Jericho was surrounded by a great earthen rampart, or embankment, with a stone retaining wall at its base. The retaining wall was some four to five meters (12–15 feet) high. On top of that was a mudbrick wall two meters (six feet) thick and about six to eight meters (20–26 feet) high.4 At the crest of the embankment was a similar mudbrick wall whose base was roughly 14 meters (46 feet) above the ground level outside the retaining wall (see diagram). This is what loomed high above the Israelites as they marched around the city each day for seven days. Humanly speaking, it was impossible for the Israelites to penetrate the impregnable bastion of Jericho.  (Ernst Sellin and Carl Watzinger, Jericho die Ergebnisse der Ausgrabungen, Osnabrück, Otto Zeller Verlag, p. 58, 1973 (reprint of the 1913 edition)

You see how impenetrable the city seemed to be, probably much like some of the problems that you have had in your life. They all worked out, did they not? The Lord was working behind the scenes for Joshua and the Israelites. He had already determined that He would give the city over into their hands before they began their trek around the wall for seven days. They had to act on faith, which they did and God came through for them. Do you know what scientists have discovered about Jericho? It suffered a massive enough earthquake that the wall fell flat. Uhm-hm-m, God working behind the scenes.

In My Life – First Account

Like I told you yesterday, I have become accustomed to praying to God about problems and having them worked out. So you can imagine when I really wanted to write my first book that I was gung-ho. I knew Who I served, and I knew that He would take care of any problems and situations that arose. Again, like I told you earlier this week, yes, up to the time of the writing of my first book, I had had my share of ups and downs, but had learned to accept whatever His will was for me.

But this was different. This was a book, and it was mostly poetry about Him, so I knew this was a winner. I mean He had brought me through so much, hadn’t He? Ha ha ha, I did not have a clue. I had written several poems and finally let myself be talked into writing a book. I labored through the process of amassing enough poems to put in a book, took the time to put them into categories, came up with appropriate titles for them, bought a dictionary of rhyming words, purchased a new computer, etc. It seemed that the writing was always needing something, either paper, ink, folders, notebooks, pencils, ink pens, etc. But I knew that my book was destined to do great because it was a labor of love for me about God.

Writing was so expensive, and when I got ready to have it printed, nobody much was interested in a poetry book! Nobody much wanted even to take the time to read it. I could not believe it. Of course, I prayed about it. Then one day a friend of mine told me about crowdfunding. I found out that people will pay to have your book published. All you had to do was ask. So, I started my crowdfunding campaign. I put aside my thoughts that I was begging, I mean this is the way authors got published I was told. (I could laugh loud and long on that one.)

Y’all, that crowdfunding campaign was a hot mess. There I had gone and put my name out on the web begging (what it felt like to me) and everybody knew it, and I did not raise enough to get the little bit that was donated. It was a pittance, and I was a pitiful wreck of a mess. I had succumbed to begging, and everybody knew it. I felt like a failure because I had put myself in a position where people could see me sweat and gloat about it. (In my mind, I kept wondering where God was.)

I still didn’t understand why I could not get my book published. Well, I managed to scrape up funds and have my book self-published. I used to be embarrassed about that until I found out that that was the way that some of our most successful writers got started. And anyway, my book was a good book; it really was, and people would want it if only they knew about it. Ha Ha Ha (cont. tomorrow)

I did get the graphic done that I mentioned to you. It is rough, but maybe you can make it out.



Doing What I Can, While I Can Because I Care,

Alma L. Jones

Christian Author & Poet